Fitting more clips into TMPGEnc DVD author. Anybody know?

[hellfire45]

I have a series of about 30 clips and they are about 200mb each. I am trying to burn them to DVD however in this program only about 4 200MB clips fit onto 1 DVD. I mean should alot more fit? If a DVD has like 4gigs. I know there is some space used for buffering and stuff but I was hoping somebody knew how to fit these alittle better.

Thanks.

[TBoneit]

What format are the clips ?

TDA 3 will convert non DVD reasy clips to DVD specs. Thus a 200Mb AVI could easily convert to taking 25% of a DVD. The run time is the important thing.

[hellfire45]

They are .avi. The runtime on each is about 22 minutes.

is there way that I can fix it so they they dont take up so much of the DVD?

[akrako1]

encode the .avi's to DVD compliant mpeg-2 files before you author. that way you can control the bitrate (size) of each file - and TDA3 won't have to do the conversion.

Take your total running time, and use the bitrate calc to determine the minimum bitrate for each clip, so that all clips fit. With 30 clips of 22 minutes each, I have a feeling that you won't be happy with the bitrate req'd to make it all fit on 1 (or even 2) dvd's...

[tametomo]

I often use TMGEnc DVD Author to combine clips on to a dvd. I leave my settings set on dual layer dvds, even though I only use single layer. If the amount of video runs pass the 4.7 GB amount for a single layer, I run the TDA results through DVDShrink. I think you are trying to put too much on one dvd, so I don't know what kind of results you would get. But since I barely go over, if at all, my results are good.

[hellfire45]

some of these files used to me .mvk files and i reencoded them using AlltoAvi but I'm not sure if AlltoAvi really has very many options about selecting the actual bitrate that you want. It pretty much gives you 1000kb/sec, 700kb/sec and 400kb/sec as the options. Is that going to be good enough to get the file size down?
As it stands I'm only getting 4 clips on 1 DVD and im just not too sure how many blank DVDs i want to use. Id be happy if I could get like 7 or 8 on a disc. If I reduce the bitrate from 1000 to 700 i doubt that ill get those extra 3 or 4 episodes on there still.

Do you have a program you recommend to cut down the bitrate?

I just bought TDA so i dont really think getting a different authoring program is an option at this point especially since I like it and don't know of any better off the top of my head, though I'm sure they exist.

[akrako1]

if possible, take your original files (mkv), and encode then directly to mpeg-2 with a mpeg encoder. Check out the guides section for details. I use TMPGEnc Plus as my encoder (newer versions are called TMPGEnc Xpress). You will have full control of the bitrates used.

Using the bitrate calc, I determined the following:
https://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

6 clips. Computing for 6x22min = 132minutes= 2hr 12min total
2hr12min @ 4391kbps will fill a DVD. This is a decent bitrate for Full D1 (740x480). I would recommend encoding with 2-pass VBR and you shouldn't notice any quality degredation.

7 clips. 7x22=154min=2hr 34min
to fit a DVD with 7 clips, you'd need a bitrate of 3731kbps on each clip. This is probably too low for your purposes - and below the recommend bitrate for Full D1 (at least by TMPGEnc Plus)

[ricardouk]

here's my advice:

Favc is an excelent(free) avi to dvd program, it does the conversion, authoring and even makes a simple menu that enables the user to select the videos:

select 8 videos for each dvd, you'll neeed 4 dvds.

if you want to put everything in 2 dvds, get TMPGEnc (free) and convert all the clips to vcd in batch mode, dvd players will play them but quality wont be as good as FAVC